Hello, neighbors, I need to renew the registration on my car, and I got a notice from the MVA telling me there was an "administrative flag fee" of $30 on my account. I called the MVA and asked what this was about. They said their records showed that I was late paying a ticket (back in 2004) and that the City of Baltimore asked for my account to be flagged. The ticket had been paid, their records showed, but I still owed the MVA the $30 administrative fee.
I thought this was suspicious, because I didn't remember being late paying a ticket. I did remember going to court to contest a ticket, which I won. At first the MVA made it sound like there was nothing I could do, but when I explained this, they said I would have to get a letter from the City saying that the flag was in error, and then the MVA would waive the fee. This didn't sound very hopeful to me, but I decided to try. I called the Parking Fines number, waited on hold for half an hour this morning, and finally talked to a person. I asked why did I get the flag, gave my vehicle information, and waited while they checked. The clerk came back and said that there was a mistake and that they would issue a letter. I was so surprised -- I was expecting to have to argue, so I asked for clarification, and she confirmed it. I had to go down to 200 North Holliday to pick up the letter, because she said it would take three (yes, 3) weeks to mail it to me. I did go down there, and the service was pretty efficient. In and out in seven minutes. At first the clerk I talked said "We don't waive administrative flag fees" but I gave him the name of the woman I spoke to, and he came back with two letters: one saying I had paid ("parking fine release") and the other saying the fee was in error. Here's what I think happened. I got the ticket, asked for a Court date, and didn't pay. Because the Parking Division didn't get paid, they automatically flagged my registration with the MVA. When the ticket was dismissed, nobody bothered to lift the flag, despite the fact that I never owed the fine to begin with. I heard another clerk tell another citizen that the MVA was now flagging every ticket that wasn't paid within 30 days. She said, "They [MVA] just started doing that." Makes me wonder what's actually going on. What if the City of Baltimore is not the party initiating all the admin flag fees and this is just a handy way for the MVA to raise some additional funds? In any case, the moral of the story is that if you do get assessed an admin flag fee unfairly, it's probably easier to get it lifted than you might suspect at first. The Parking Division clearly does this a lot because they had a fill-in-the-blank form ready for this action. Another lesson is that if you get a ticket dismissed by a judge, make a note to check your MVA registration record to see if you got flagged for that ticket. In my case, it was nearly two years ago that my registration was flagged. I was tempted to not bother because there was a good chance I had just forgotten about some $20 ticket, but I'm glad I did. I would give the City a grade of "B" on this. This mistake shouldn't have happened, but the staff were courteous and efficient in correcting the error. I wish I hadn't had to spend 20 minutes on the phone with the MVA, another 30 on the phone with the City, and make a trip downtown (plus a trip to the MVA to make sure nothing gets screwed up), but it was easier than I expected. --Emil -- Emil Volcheck [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://acm.org/~volcheck _______________________________________________ Chat mailing list Chat@charlesvillage.info http://charlesvillage.info/mailman/listinfo/chat_charlesvillage.info